A mortgage is security for a loan in the form
of the provision of a right in property, such as land or buildings,
or (more commonly) a sum of money borrowed for which property is the
security.

In everyday terms a mortgage is an amount of
money borrowed to buy a house (or some land, a business, or a boat,
etc) in exchange for giving the lender some rights in the property.
Typically, if terms of the loan are
not met, then the lender has the right to sell the property to
recover the debt.

Mortgages are usually long term arrangements –
15, 25, 50 years for instance. The length of the mortgage is called
the “mortgage term” it is the amount of time between when the loan
is originally made and when it is expected to be fully repaid.

Endowment and Interest Only Mortgages are
mortgages where the borrower only pays the interest due during the
term of the mortgage and repays none of the capital borrowed until
completion of the mortgage term. Some other means - such as an
endowment policy maturing - is then used to pay off the capital at
the end of the mortgage.

Endowment Mortgages usually have a higher
interest rate because they are a higher risk to the lender.
Because they don't require repayment of the capital during the
mortgage, the monthly payments are lower.

However, if the endowment policy attached to
the mortgage does not perform as well as expected, there may be a
large amount of capital still to be paid when the mortgage term
ends.